


The Beast of Sand and Sea

by Nibsy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Monsters, Prompt Fill, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:33:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23509972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nibsy/pseuds/Nibsy
Summary: Prompt: In the Night Palace, they told stories of a pure black unicorn seen standing at the edge of the sea. It was thought to be an omen of certain death.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	The Beast of Sand and Sea

The wind was all Alphonse knew. That, and the cold, and the fog that blurred every single line in sight in the coming darkness. It was cold, and the wind blew harsh in the naked branches above, and Alphonse could not see a foot in front of his eyes. What a mad idea, going into the wild, into the night, in the heart of winter - that was what they’d all said anyway, at the palace, when he’d announced his big quest. He’d sneered at them, then, barking that they’d be grateful later, when he’d saved them all… he was starting to see their point, now.

His thick fur coat was of good help against the wind, at least. Inside its fine lining, Alphonse could smell the faint remains of his wife’s perfume. He huddled a little deeper into his hood, burrowing his nose into the comforting scent. He had to go on.

Night was approaching fast, of course. December kept its course, big quest or not, for heroes and for the rest. Alphonse had no time to stop - that was what he convinced himself of, but really, he was too afraid to take a break. With the heavy fog all around, he could not shake the feeling that everything around him could be watching. Demons in the night, beasts hidden within the hissing brambles. He lumbered on, hurting under the weight of both his pack and the hours of walking behind him. The snow made everything just that much more miserable, too: it clung to the soles of his boots, melted into his pants, achieved to chill him to the bone where the bitter wind had failed before.  
Overcome with exhaustion, fear and cold, Alphonse finally fell to his knees in the middle of the forest, exhaling in a raw, raging scream. A few crows screamed back at him, taking flight, awoken by the sudden noise.

“No use. ‘M lost.” He sighed, searching his damp pack with frozen fingers to find his oil. He lit his lantern, glueing his hands to its frosty glass for a bit of warmth. He sighed again. He was hungry, but too exhausted and cold to attempt any cooking. Besides, his mind was much too set on his goals... Or it tried to be. In reality, annoying as it was, Alphonse’s mind kept coming back to the paper. The paper had been there, hovering at the back of his brain, since his departure from the castle. The paper, and all the meaning that came with it. Finally giving in, Alphonse fished into his inner breast pocket and pulled out the little sheet of paper. Not the freshest; yellowing, crumpled… empty. Alphonse looked at it for a long time, thoughts swirling in his mind. Not now, he decided. Later. He folded it back carefully, in four neat parts, and placed it back into the pocket his dear wife had sewn into the coat, humming a sad song, not a few weeks back, upon Alphonse’s request. Upon giving it back to him, she had squeezed his hand into her own - briefly, but strongly. He had avoided her sad eyes, ignored her loving pleas. His heart was already set, then. Perhaps stronger than it was now, alone, in this dark forest. He got up, held up his lamp before his icy eyes, and walked on.

“God is my witness, no tears, no mockery, no doubt will stop me now.”

He walked on. After another hour, the wind calmed down a little; by the early hours of dawn, the fog had lifted just enough so that Alphonse could get a sense of his surroundings again. Now that the constant gushes of wind were no longer hissing in the trees all around him, Alphonse could almost hear the ocean in the far distance. Salt rose in the air just as the first glimpses of light rose in the sky, and had it been any other day, in any other circumstances, Alphonse would have felt the jolt of irresistible joy that always seemed to come with dawn, or with the ocean, and especially with both at once. But it wasn’t just any day. Alphonse knew all too well what would come of this one, and what he was sure to find on the lonely shores of winter. The thought made him shiver just as strongly as the windy night; the taste of legend bitter on his tongue.

The story had first come from fishermen coming back from weeks at sea: a beast, horse-like and tall, awaiting the sailors on nearby shores, devouring anyone who dared come too close. As always with fishermen stories, the villagers had quickly dismissed them, though they happily ran the word around, always glad for a new fable to share during the long and achingly dull winter months. It eventually reached higher circles, told in soirées between rich merchants and petty nobles eager for a good scary folk tale. It merged, then, into a rich fantasy; the black unicorn who stood at the edge of the sea at night, tirelessly looking for its next victim among the unlucky sailors whose fate had led to the wrong shore. The most daring among the curious took it upon themselves to look for the monster. It was not past october, then. Some never returned. Those who did spoke of terrible things. All began to fear the fishermen might have been right.  
It was then that the news reached the castle and those who lived there. Alphonse had heard of it from the Duke himself, who was not sure what to make of this whole ordeal. Alphonse had not paid much attention at the time; his daughter was showing signs of sickness. Words rose within the castle, though, and soon it became the talk of every gathering, everyone sharing the story between tiny gasps and sips of fine wine. People laughed. Some knights decided to go and see for themselves.

When they did not come back, it was the Duke’s turn to catch fright. People were afraid to go near the shores. Merchants turned inwards, towards the land, to conduct their commerce. Fishermen refused to go at sea, and food quickly came to miss.

Time passed. Alphonse worried more and more. His daughter’s health did not improve, and more people around caught the same sickness; a cough, a fever, nothing unusual, but frightful and deadly. Word travelled far and wide, and people cut links with the whole region for fear of spreading the disease, and finally, the Duke received a warning from the Prince himself: control your domain, or face consequences.  
Despite the disease plaguing the region, people did not forget about the beast of the sea. Worrying murmurs spread from hushed lips to furious ears: thoughts of revolt, plans of killing… The Duke could not control the first, but he could investigate the second, and get rid of at least one of his problems once and for all. He sent spies this time, instructing them to be careful rather than cocky, to study the threat and come back with ways to kill it for good. Those who came back only did with a harrowing look in their eyes, and spoke of a great beast; a dark horse with a towering horn shooting out from its forehead, and a neigh loud as the ocean itself. One with water and one with sand, unmoving, but always watching the sails across the horizon. It looked at one of us, they said, and the poor man died right where he stood from sheer terror.

From that day on, no one dared walk anywhere near the beach. Fishermen improvised themselves hunters, or they left for other towns, for other shores. Peasants shut themselves in, both to protect themselves from the plague, and out of certainty that the monster would eventually find its way into the town. Nobles, for their part, never spoke of the tale again. They all moved on, too busy with other concerns. All, except Alphonse. He had seen the whole story unfold from afar, uninterested. His wife came back to him from court one day and told him of the Angel of Death who stood on the shores, relentless in its pursuit of doom. Alphonse had snorted a laugh, like they’d all done before him. Then he had seen the fearful light in her eyes, and the idea behind it.

She only told him later, in the form of a choked whisper in the quiet of night, after they had gone to sleep.  
“Sofia caught sickness the same day the monster appeared.”

The idea was seared into his mind, like with a red hot iron, from that moment on. And his peers laughed, and the Duke disapproved, and his wife pleaded, but none of them mattered: Sofia did.  
Sofia, with her tiny, round, feverish cheeks, with her plump little hands and her bright little face, damp with sweat under the numerous blankets that swallowed her almost entirely. If the Angel was to take her, it would have to take him first. Ten fierce knights had not been able to end the threat, but a desperate father just might.

Alphonse came into the clearing out of the woods now, blinking to clear his foggy gaze. He looked upon the shore from the distant hill where he stood. All was calm, as a winter beach should be. Weeds tangled at the foamy shore. Grey waves rose and fell with heavy, monotonous torpor. Above, far between the clouds, a pale light descended upon the sea: morning was slow to come today, as it had been everyday for the last two months. Adjusting his pack on his shoulder, Alphonse slowly descended the slope of the hill.

A strange feeling took him as he walked closer to the water, all the while carefully minding his feet which sank heavily into the damp sand with each step. All was quiet, except for the rolling waves and the crying gulls above them. The air smelled of salt and iron, the wind swept Alphonse’s damp hair across his cheeks. All was calm; there was no monster here. Alphonse felt a great wave of despair rising in his chest, which soon consumed him.

“Will you not appear to me, when you took all my friends? Will you take my daughter, as well? Won’t you give me a chance to bargain!?”

As he cried, he heard the waves crashing onto shore, louder and louder with every sob. He heard the call of thunder clashing with the ocean, and a chill caught his bones once again, colder than he’d even felt within the deep of night. He looked up to see the dark clouds, grey and thick as before, but unmoving, like a decor suspended into the sky with invisible strings. He heard thunder again, loud and shrill, but he never saw any lightning slash across the sky. He looked in front of him then, and understood that there was never any thunder; the growling, the hissing and neighing only came from the beast that lay in front of him, slithering among muddy sand, green and slimy with seaweed and struggling to stand up straight. It looked right at him with white eyes under the pale light of dawn, its whole body trembling. The horn on its forehead, like the legend claimed, shot up and twisted towards the sky like a spear, but it was broken in half, the point of it laying on the beach next to its fuming nostrils. In front of Alphonse’s stunned eyes, the black monster almost rose for a second, huge and unnerving, then fell again with a heavy breath. It kept staring, white eyes into human ones, the sides of its slick face illuminated by the fleeting orange light of Alphonse’s lantern, which had fallen onto the sand.

“You will not have your chance, hero. You have come too late.” Murmured a vaguely female voice, weak yet otherworldly, which Alphonse managed to hear above the crashing waves. “Another came before you.” She continued, blinking her bright eyes, the hint of sharp fangs pulling at her blackish muzzle.

“No… who? Who did this?” Alphonse asked, desperate, falling onto the cold, damp sand before her.

“One you cannot touch,” she whispered painfully, “The Duke. He offered a price on my head; the fishermen came quickly to claim it. They stole your victory.”

“But… but… I came to...”

“You had not come to kill me. I know. It does not matter, now.”

“I had come to bargain…”

Alphonse tried to choke back the tears, in vain. Why was he so moved by the sight of a dying monster? The unicorn’s breath deepened. She looked at the man in front of her with intelligent, pained eyes. She said,  
“Your life for hers. I waited for someone like you... someone who would ask before they attacked. Why did you come so late?”

She took a breath, her eyes wavering a little, before she continued. “It is too late for me. But It might not be for you. You have no need for the paper, human… You have no letter to write.”  
Astonished, Alphonse drew his hand to his breast, squeezing the paper inside.

“I don’t understand…”

The black beast turned her head a little, pointing her nose towards the fallen horn.

“They broke me so they could kill me. But my strength is still there, forgotten in the sand. I can no longer use it. But you can.”

Alphonse looked at the horn, trying to remember his readings about unicorns. Mad tales, he’d always thought before all this. Mad tales which he could use now, if only he remembered what they prescribed. Some, those Alphonse had planned to follow, assured that unicorns granted exactly one wish, and only to the pure of heart. Others spoke of different powers - healing powers, but it was mentioned so rarely that Alphonse had dismissed this hope early into his research.

“I thought I knew what I had to do.” He said, tentatively.

“Did you?” There was irony in her voice. “You came to save one soul, at the cost of another. You will leave with a mission to save many, at the cost of none, other than mine. What is this doubt I sense on your mind?”

Alphonse opened his heavy, wet coat, and took the piece of paper from its protective pocket. He unfolded it carefully, and gazed at it for a moment.

“You have no need for it,” she insisted. “Do not write to her. Live so you can save her. Live so you can save them all.”

“Did you really do it?” Alphonse brought himself to ask, after a few silent minutes. “Did you kill these poor men?”

The white eyes turned to him, full of sorrow.

“What I did is irrelevant. What matters is what you will decide to do, hero.”

“I am no hero. I am tired, and ready to pay the price. Will you not grant me my wish?”

“Will you not grant me mine? You will be a hero, if to no man, at least to her. Is that not enough? I am powerless; your wish was lost in the sand when they mutilated me. I am not your saviour, but you can be mine.”

Alphonse pondered this thought for a minute.

“Why do you want to save the very village you tormented for weeks?” He asked, finally.

He heard the monster sigh tiredly. Above, dawn seemed to have decided to wait for a bit longer before showing its true colours, out of respect, or maybe out of sorrow.

“You believe I brought the plague to your race. You are mistaken. I tried to prevent it.”

“I don’t understand…”

“The disease comes from the sea, and your own kind, the fishermen, brought it to the village. I tried to stop the spread, to warn them before they came on shore. They did not listen. Instead, they made a story, a trophy out of me. I failed. I was doomed to fail, stuck here between land and sea, forced to answer to fear instead of love. You should all have fled.”

“They said you were a killer...”

“Whoever is right, your people - your daughter is dying as we speak. Do not linger, now. Will you grant my wish? Will you succeed, where I failed?”

Alphonse looked at her again, suddenly called back to reality from his tormented mind. A large wave came in, licking at the muddy strands of her long mane. She appeared diminished now, smaller, somehow.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then give me your paper, and I will offer you my horn. Then, fast as you can, go to the mill, and grind it into a powder. A pinch for each cup of water, and all must drink to be cured. Save her life, let me be of use before I draw my last breath.”

“And the Duke? And the rest of them?”

“They will face their own destiny. The choice is yours. She, or them.”

“...That is not a real choice.”

“Is any choice ever real?”

“...No, I don’t suppose so.”

He smiled, and in the greyish glow of morning, he was sure to see the glint of an answer in the beast’s eye. “Quick now…” she whispered, weaker than ever under the wailing of the sea. “Give up your letter. Allow your plans to change.”

Alphonse gazed another moment at the unicorn laying there, covered in seaweed and sand, then he teared his eyes from her and turned them to the ocean which kept playing with her black tail, calm, unmoved by the tragedy currently unfolding in its own waters. Nodding, sniffling, Alphonse then folded the precious paper for the last time and slid it carefully under the warm snoot, feeling its uneven breath, damp, on his hands.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “The waves be my witness, under the rising dawn, I hereby entrust my horn upon you and you alone, Sir Alphonse of the Night Palace, to use as you please from this day on. Take it, treasure it, do not let anyone see it. It will serve you the way I intended, I promise.”

A cloud passed above them, spreading a wide shadow all across the fallen beast and the grave man kneeling before her. They exchanged a gaze in silence.

“My wife was right about one thing,” said Alphonse after a minute. “You really are an angel.”

Her breath slowing down, like her conscience was finally eased, the black beast closed its piercing white eyes, without which light her body was now entirely blurred into the greenish sand, and with her last breath, she answered. “Your mind is bright, human. What a waste of a soul you would have been, had they not gotten to me first. Go, now. Do not wonder about me. Go… hero.”

Alphonse looked upon her as she faded, until he could no longer distinguish her from the sand and waves. Shy beams of light came through the clouds now, a pale goodbye from the weak winter sun. Do not wonder about me, now. Alphonse got up, found the horn in the sand, slick with seaweed and blood. He tucked it into his coat; where the paper had been protected before it. He straightened his back then, adjusted his hood and breathed in the salty air, deeply, cleansing both his lungs and his mind from doubt and resentment. One pinch in a cup of water. That was all he needed to heal his child. A gust of wind flew into his face, blowing his hood right off and washing his cheeks with icy droplets of ocean water. A wide smile spread upon Alphonse’s lips, wide as this new hope which had suddenly taken root all over his chest. One pinch, a cup of water, and the blessing of an angel. That was all. He turned around and, leaving the ocean, the sand and the lonely dawn behind, he walked up the hill.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #1810 from deepwaterwritingprompts on tumblr, mixed with a visual prompt; an old and crumpled piece of paper. Just a bit of fun!


End file.
